10 Reasons to Take the Google Data Analytics Course on Coursera

I recently completed my data analytics course on Coursera and I would like to encourage anyone that wants to pursue a career in data analytics to consider taking this course. This course may be just what you need to kickstart your career as a data analyst. Let me start by stressing that I am in no way affiliated with Google or Coursera, this is simply my personal opinion based on my experience taking and completing this course. I will share with you ten (10) reasons why you should take this course too.

1.?There?is a huge demand for data analysts globally.?Demand for data analysts has continued to rise. We are living in a world where data is the new gold. Organizations have realized that their competitive advantage lies in their abilities to extract insightful information from the huge amount of data that is out there. Organizations are looking for people with the right set of skills to help them unlock the power that is in the data. People that can get raw data and transform it into a useful format that can contribute to an organization’s competitive advantage and decision-making are highly sought after. At the time of writing this article, Indeed (jobs website) had over 40k job openings for data analysts. When you become a data analyst, you can work in any industry that you want. A data analyst can work in finance, health, transport, tech, entertainment, art, and so many other industries. You can even work for yourself. Think about it, by taking this course you will gain in-demand skills that you can apply in whatever industry you choose to work in. That is great power if you ask me.

2.?This course has no prerequisites.?The only thing that it demands from you is the hunger to learn. You will meet and learn from google employees (with different backgrounds) that have become very successful data analysts. They will share their journeys, knowledge, skills, and industry insights with you. So it does not matter what your current occupation is, or what your background looks like, you can still take this course. The course will teach you everything from scratch. You will learn how to clean, organize, analyze and visualize data. You will have plenty of assessments to complete, and at the end, you will complete a full project that will bring together everything that you have learned. This is something that I loved about the course.

3.?You will learn how to use Google Sheets/Excel.?If you have always wanted to learn spreadsheets or just brush up on your spreadsheet skills, this course will help you do just that. In this course, you will have a choice to either use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Excel/Google sheets are one of the most used tools in the data analytics field. 98% of all data analyst job postings demand that one be competent in spreadsheets. This course will teach you how to clean data, write functions and create visualizations using spreadsheets. You will learn about pivot tables, data formatting, and conditional formatting using both Excel and Google sheets. The course also provides plenty of materials and assessments to practice your spreadsheet skills on. By the end of the course, you will be able to add spreadsheets to your skillset.

4.?You will learn programming with R.?R is a statistical language that is hugely useful in the data processing world. It is a very popular language in data analytics. Big tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Google use R for their data analytics. You cannot go wrong with R. At the time of writing this article, there were over 1 million job openings that require R programming skills. Learning R will make you stand out from the crowd. If you have always wanted to learn a programming language, this course will give you a chance to learn a powerful statistical programming language. Don’t worry if you don’t know anything, this course will start from the very basics of the R programming language. Remember that this course is beginner-friendly. The good news is that once you learn one programming language, it will be easy for you to learn other programming languages.

5.?You will be introduced to SQL using Google’s Big Query.?Analyzing data in spreadsheets is all fun until the rows of data are in millions. Spreadsheets struggle to analyze very huge amounts of data. That’s when SQL (Structured Query Language) becomes handy. SQL was built to handle huge amounts of data, an amount of data that you will struggle to process in a spreadsheet. Simply put, you cannot be a data analyst if you do not know SQL. Almost every data analytics job requires that you know SQL. This course will teach you everything you need to know to start your SQL learning and mastering journey. You will learn how to write queries using SQL, how to clean data, how to do calculations, how to join data from different tables and so much more. This course uses the Google Big Query platform, but the skills that you will learn can be used on any SQL platform. SQL is a very powerful language to have on your resume.

6.?The course will teach you about Tableau.?To be able to create powerful visualizations of your data is a powerful skill to have on your resume. Every data analyst is required to have this skill set in their locker. People that know how to use Tableau are paid handsomely by the industry. Once you master this tool, your job prospects will always be bright. This course will introduce you to all that you need to know to start using the Tableau platform and create powerful and beautiful visualizations for your analysis. You cannot learn this skill in a day, that is why this Google data analytics course provides not just plenty of exercises, but also pretty of extra resources that will help you become a master of Tableau over time.

7.?This course will have your job ready in 6 months.?The course aims to have you job-ready in 6 months. After you finish the course, you should be competent enough to apply for data analyst entry-level jobs. The course has tips from people in the industry (mostly employees from Google) and resources that will help you find your first data analyst job. It also provides tips (from hiring managers) on how to write a killer resume that gets you interviews, and how to negotiate your salary with potential employers. It provides extra resources that you can dig into to increase your chances of landing an entry-level data analyst job.

8.?A data analyst role will help you become a data scientist, a machine learning engineer, or a data engineer.?This entry-level qualification will open doors of possibilities for you. The skills that you will obtain from this course, are the same type of skills that are widely used by data scientists, machine learning engineers, and data engineers. You can easily build on what you will learn in this course to take up more advanced roles in the world of data. The demand for these highly sought-after professionals is projected to grow even more in the coming years. Completing this course will have you in great company.

9.?You can apply for financial aid.?Coursera charges $39 per month for anyone who wants to learn on their platform. However, if you want to study this course and you do not have the money at the moment, you can apply for financial aid. Google has made it possible for people that cannot afford to pay to study for free. Think about it, you have a chance to obtain a world-class qualification for free.

10.?You will be learning from a tech giant — Google. Google is the 5th most valuable company in the world. Their products are some of the most in-demand products of the tech world. A Google certificate on your resume will impress any potential employer. This certificate will make you stand out from the crowd.

If you are interested in taking the course, you can use the link?here to find the course. Good luck.